I ordered 7 CDs from The End Records last Wednesday, got them on Friday.
\nThey were out of stock on one of them (Dusk), but as usual their service
\nwas top-notch. 6 CDs for $60. I imagine you could pay that much for
\nonly three CDs at a mall store, with the only difference being the mall
\nstore CDs wouldn’t be nearly as cool.<\/p>\n
Misanthrope – Immortal Misanthrope<\/em>: Yeah! With their fifth album, Odes of Ecstasy – Deceitful Melody<\/em>: Somewhat different than what I was Love History – Anasazi<\/em>: A Czech band, which, as far as I can tell, Enid – Abschiedsreigen<\/em>: From The End’s description and the sound clip, Let Me Dream – Greyscales<\/em>: The End called them “Uptempo death rock with Dawnbringer – Catharsis Instinct<\/em>: American band playing melodic death ==========<\/p>\n Now, the CDs I got from Napster. I figured it out how to get it running Skyclad – Folkemon<\/em>: This one grabbed me immediately, unlike the last two Helloween – The Dark Ride<\/em>: Yet another winner from Helloween. As usual, Opeth – Blackwater Park<\/em>: Ok, I’ve only listened to it once, which is a I ordered 7 CDs from The End Records last Wednesday, got them on Friday. They were out of stock on one of them (Dusk), but as usual their service was top-notch. 6 CDs for $60. I imagine you could pay that much for only three CDs at a mall store, with the only difference being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nit seems like Misanthrope has continued with their streak of improving
\nwith every album. And no, their first album doesn’t suck. Anyway, it
\ncontinues pretty much where their last album (Libertine Humiliations<\/em>)
\nleft off: Avant-garde melodic death metal, albeit less avant-garde than
\nin their early days but still very unique. Think Dark Tranquillity’s
\n“Haven” with twice the speed, twice the intensity, four times the synths,
\nand a bit more showmanship. Would have most likely been near the top
\nof my “best of 2000” list if I had gotten it in 2000.<\/p>\n
\nexpecting, since dweeb kept describing it as “festive”. Thus I was thinking
\nit would be something pretty happy, but it’s really mostly in line
\nwith their first album, just maybe a bit more developed. Basically it’s
\nbeauty & the beast metal, with a good emphasis on “metal” rather than
\n“goth”, which is how I like it. I also like how they sneak in a creepy
\nsong near the end of the album like they did on their first one.<\/p>\n
\nautomatically makes them good. They have the characteristic sound that
\nall Czech bands I’ve heard seem to have; it’s very hard to describe,
\nbut I really like it. All types of singing (male, female, growls),
\na solid metal base, and things just seem to be written and played more
\ncreatively than most bands. But it’s not creativity just to be different,
\nit seems like their natural way of writing music. Cross Root’s The
\nBook<\/em> with Forgotten Silence’s Senyaan<\/em>, and you’ll get something
\npretty close to Anasazi<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nI was expecting something similar to Angizia: piano\/keyboard-led classically
\ninfluenced music with a Germanic touch. It’s that, but more. Unlike
\nAngizia, it gets both fast and heavy, sometimes sounding something like
\na cross between Haggard and Dimmu Borgir (ok, maybe that’s a stretch).
\nVery interesting.<\/p>\n
\ngrowly and clean vocals” which sounded good to me, and Dark Symphonies
\nsaying the album was a must for Vintersorg\/Havayoth fans sealed it for
\nme. It doesn’t really sound like Vintersorg or Havayoth; rather, it falls
\nsomewhere in between. It’s covered with Havayoth-like synths, has a
\nmix of black, rough-sung, and Viking-style vocals, and pretty much a
\nsolid metal base. It does sound Finnish, since it’s Finnish.<\/p>\n
\nmetal, perhaps with the goal of sounding Swedish, but thankfully since
\nthey aren’t Swedish, they’re unsuccessful at that. If they had a clean
\nsinger they might be called an American power metal band (like Iced Earth,
\nNevermore), but their growler, even though he’s very low in the mix,
\ntakes them out of that category. I think all of the interesting and
\ncreative riffs will help this one stand out from the pack a bit.<\/p>\n
\nat work this week, so it was my first time actually trying it out. I
\ndownloaded 3 albums, and I fully intend to buy at least two of them.
\nSince my players at home and work can read CD-RWs, it makes it pretty
\nnice because I can just burn a temporary copy until I buy the real thing,
\nor just erase it if I don’t like it. The only reason I bothered to
\nget these albums is because it’s easier than it is to get a hold of the
\nreal versions. Since I don’t have golden ears, I can’t really tell the
\ndifference between high-quality mp3s burned to CD and real CDs, and thus, I
\nwould gladly just pay the record companies to download the songs from them.
\nUnfortunately, there’s no one ready to accept my money yet, so I’ll have
\nto eventually pay them the old-fashioned way. Obviously I realize not
\neveryone feels the same way as I do, which is why Napster is such a big
\nproblem. Anyway, it was interesting to actually try out Napster finally.
\nHere’s what I got:<\/p>\n
\nSkyclad albums (which have never completely grabbed me). At first I
\nthought it must be a whole lot different than Vintage Whine<\/em>, but upon
\ngoing back to VW<\/em>, I realized it’s pretty similar. The difference
\nseems to be in the energy, which is just bursting out of Folkemon<\/em>. I’d
\nsay it combines the style and heaviness of Silent Whales…<\/em> with the
\nattitude and vibe of Oui Avant Garde a Chance<\/em>. It might become
\none of my favorite Skyclad albums.<\/p>\n
\nthey make steps forward and do something different, while still hanging
\non to bits of what they’ve done before. Cool atmosphere, and it’s
\nDeris’s least-annoying performance yet, as he uses a lot of his lower
\nrange and does a lot of cool whispering.<\/p>\n
\nstupid time to say anything about an Opeth album, but I’ll say something
\nanyway. So far it’s pretty much what I expected. Which is something not
\ntoo exciting, and something that sounds very familiar. Sure, it’s well
\nplayed and well produced, but I don’t really hear anything significantly
\ndifferent than what they’ve done on their last two albums. The change
\nbetween Morningrise<\/em> and My Arms, Your Hearse<\/em> was huge, but since then
\nit seems like they’ve just been doing the same thing. What I would love
\nto hear is where Opeth would go next if they were to make another stylistic
\nchange similar in magnitude to their first one. But the band seems happy
\ntreading water, or maybe that’s just what happens when you quickly churn out
\nalbum after album. I guess if you loved Still Life<\/em>, you’ll love this too.
\nMe, I’ll give it plenty more chances to grow on me, but I think at its best
\nit can only stand as the most refined variation on a theme rather than an
\noutright masterpiece like Morningrise<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"